Thinking back on it, life leech really was an unmitigated game design disaster, completely useless at early levels and incredibly overpowering at the highest ones. And it looks like they're keeping it unchanging in D3, except even boosting it up by making it apply to casters as well.

I imagine this may have been discussed to death on these forums by now, but... I couldn't find those discussions So... what's the general consensus?

With specific values, yes, you can have five multipliers that equate to a value that is smaller than two other multipliers.

But... an important characteristic of multiplication is that, given sufficient time, the five multipliers will eventually produce a value that is greater than two similarly increasing multipliers.

Diablo 3 is a highly equipment-centric game. Values *will* always be going up. That's why people run the hard content, to get the better stuff. If Blizzard releases DLC with even better stuff, then the problem will be there too.

This problem really can't be solved in an elegant way, in my opinion. The very nature of life leech as an item stat is that it will suck at low levels of gear and be too good at high levels of gear. Essentially, your question amounts to "will it be tuned just right so that it's appropriate at the level of play that we care about". That's the only question you can really answer, because it's not going to be appropriate before that *or* after that.

The benefit is keeping an interesting stat in the game. If we cut out stuff on the basis of "IT MIGHT BREAK THE GAME," Diablo 3 isn't going to last a long time as a game. If it proves problematic they can adjust it the values or add specialized rules such as life leach caps, etc.

The benefit is keeping an interesting stat in the game. If we cut out stuff on the basis of "IT MIGHT BREAK THE GAME," Diablo 3 isn't going to last a long time as a game. If it proves problematic they can adjust it the values or add specialized rules such as life leach caps, etc.

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I would argue that its longevity will suffer if it degenerates into the same kind of nonsense that Diablo 2 did where the only path they had to give you any kind of challenge was to spike the damage so high that you'd die in a flash if you ever stopped leeching.

Diablo 2 was a great game, but it was 13 years ago. It has hilariously awful mechanics in many regards, and that doesn't fly in 2012.

Life leech will be far more important in d3 compared to d2. Items with lifesteal now are branded as vampiric and it says: x% dmg is converted to life. This could mean you get lifesteal not only from attacks but spells only ?

Don't forget "gain XX health per attack" and "gain XX health after each kill" items, which are completely independent of your dmg and scale incredibly well with attack speed.

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xx health per hit, i see that only viable on monk's way of the hundred fists, and maybe barbs frenzy anti-boss skill. x health after monster kill will be totally useless in inferno, unless its some really big number...

With specific values, yes, you can have five multipliers that equate to a value that is smaller than two other multipliers.

But... an important characteristic of multiplication is that, given sufficient time, the five multipliers will eventually produce a value that is greater than two similarly increasing multipliers.

Diablo 3 is a highly equipment-centric game. Values *will* always be going up. That's why people run the hard content, to get the better stuff. If Blizzard releases DLC with even better stuff, then the problem will be there too.

This problem really can't be solved in an elegant way, in my opinion. The very nature of life leech as an item stat is that it will suck at low levels of gear and be too good at high levels of gear. Essentially, your question amounts to "will it be tuned just right so that it's appropriate at the level of play that we care about". That's the only question you can really answer, because it's not going to be appropriate before that *or* after that.

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None of this concludes that HP will scale slower than damage as we level.

Guys trust in blizzard, somewhere i heard they got PhD guys working on the numbers (which didn't surprised me at all) that should include everything from monsters lvls/dmg lifestals vs dmg returns, drops rates... blizzard has always been good with numbers.